French Senate votes in favor of testing public facial recognition technologies

French Senate has adopted a draft law about testing public facial recognition technologies, local media reported.

The draft law was adopted on Monday with 226 votes in favor, while 117 left-wing senators rejected it, the daily Le Monde said.

It aims to create a legal framework to test, for three years, the use of biometric recognition by judiciary investigators and intelligence authorities.

The use of real-time facial recognition is widely contested by human rights organizations and some representatives.

This option will be used only for terror suspects and by intelligence authorities, Le Monde explained.

Judiciary investigators can request real-time facial recognition for kidnappings of children and extremely grave criminal cases.